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Pro wrestling legend Rip Hawk?s journey from big city lights to starry Texas nights

Posted: Aug 12th 2012 By: CMBurnham

To Mid-Atlantic wrestling fans in the ?60s and ?70s, Rip Hawk was a cocky, arrogant heel they loved to hate.

The platinum-haired Hawk even dubbed himself ?The Profile,? and did all the talking for longtime partner Swede Hanson.

It didn?t come as a surprise when Hawk, 44 years old at the time, took a 25-year-old up-and-comer named Ric Flair under his wing, groomed him as his storyline nephew and helped him win his first major title in 1974.

Who knew then that the slick-talking, hard-drinking, Cadillac-driving wrestler had always wanted to be a cowboy?

But that?s exactly what Hawk is today, and has been for the past three decades.

Hawk, who turned 82 in June, has lived in the Texas Panhandle since he wound down his wrestling career in the late ?70s. Although he lives inside the city limits of Hereford, better known as the beef capital of the world, he spends much of his time at his daughter and son-in-law?s sprawling ranch 30 miles away that?s home to nearly two thousand high-dollar Black Angus.

?We don?t have to worry about where the beef?s coming from. We have 28 feed yards around here. We will be eating meat,? he says emphatically.

Hawk, who lives about 60 miles from Interstate 40, and about 40 miles from the New Mexico border, jokes that the ample supply of cow manure keeps a lot of outsiders out.

?We run more than a million head of cattle through here a year. That?s a lot of cows. And they can smell ... especially on a warm day.?

It doesn?t bother Hawk in the least. The Panhandle, he says, is his slice of heaven on earth.

It?s a place where you actually can watch the deer and the antelope play.

Home on the range

Fans who came out in droves years ago to see Rip ?The Profile? Hawk get his comeuppance would have never imagined seeing the hated villain in cowboy attire spinning yarns about life on the ranch.

But the bright lights and big-city life wasn?t for Hawk. He set up shop in Amarillo as his wrestling career came to a close and moved 50 miles away to Hereford 25 years ago. And he?s never looked back.

?It?s wonderful here. It?s why I?m still alive. You don?t have any pressures here, you don?t have to worry about getting anywhere in a hurry because there?s nobody here. If you go out to a restaurant to eat, nobody?s going to bus your table right away. They give you the menu and tell you to take your time.?

The wrestler admits it was quite a transition from the high-pressure lifestyle he had been accustomed to.

?It was a big change. It was a cultural shock to go from the ?wild life? ? running from planes, driving yourself crazy, on the road all the time ? and then settling down. It was a complete shock. You get used to normal people. Compared to wrestling, everything is normal after that.?

Plus, he adds, ?I sobered up.?

Rather be a cowboy

To hear Hawk tell it, he?s always been a cowboy.

?I was a cowboy when I got out of the Marine Corps (in 1954). I rode broncos and tried to run bulls, but I almost got myself killed. I did the bulldogging (steer wrestling). I could rope pretty good.?

Hawk says he loves everything the cowboy philosophy espouses ? good manners, hard work and a helping hand.

He?s no stranger to hardship. He was only a child when the Great Depression struck in the early ?30s, but he vividly remembers a few years later when people were standing in line looking for food.

?They keep talking about a depression (now), but hell, I lived through a depression. This is not a depression.?

Hawk lived on a farm in the country with an outhouse in the back and no electricity or running water in the house.

?We grew our own (food). But we still needed staples. That cost money. But we were able to eat, and a lot of people weren?t.?

Hawk says his area hasn?t been hit hard by the economic downturn.

?There?s a lot of cattle here, a lot of farming and ranching. Thank God things aren?t that bad here ... at least not yet.?

?I hate to see the economy like this,? he adds. ?Our country shouldn?t be that bad. It?s the greed of all those politicians. Republicans, Democrats, they?re all greedy. You always knew there were a couple of thieves in there, but now so many are. I don?t know how those guys live with themselves. I don?t know how people get by with that. The American people have become so gullible.?

Family affair

The cowboy life is a family affair for the former wrestling great.

Hawk is particularly proud of his eldest grandson, Yaegar, who at 14 years of age is already living the life of a cowboy.

The youngster helps mend fences, breaks ice in the winter so the cattle and horses can drink, and moves cattle from one pasture to another, Hawk says proudly.

?Kids are different out here. They?re still polite to people. They?re actually kids, but they?re cowboys. They learn to ride when they?re 5 or 6 years old. Their parents teach them how to work. My grandson worked on the ranch last summer ? painting fences, moving cattle, doing whatever needs to be done. And he?s ready to do it. It?s a totally different life out here.?

But that?s the way children are brought up in these parts, he explains.

?The kids at the rodeo share their equipment. They?re not stingy with stuff. They share everything.?

His grandson, whose favorite activities are wrestling and riding bulls, wants to compete one day on the rodeo team at the collegiate level for either Texas Tech or West Texas State. Hawk says both schools have excellent rodeo programs.

?He just started riding steers a few years ago. He loves it.?

Hawk, who has been teaching his grandson wrestling at the local YMCA since he was 5, says there?s no better place to raise children and grandchildren. He thinks about what his grandson told him a couple of years ago.

?You know, Grandpa, when I?m out there all by myself riding, I look at the sky and the land, and I?m so at peace with everything. I do a lot of thinking.?

?I think that?s neat,? says Hawk. ?Here he was at 13 years old talking like that. But all these kids are basically that way. That?s why I?ll never leave this area.?

The good old days

Hawk?s path to the wrestling game almost took a detour since he was raised in a baseball family. Born Harvey Evers, he was the son of a baseball star who played in the old Texas League. Related to Johnny Evers of the immortal Tinker to Evers to Chance combination, his father became a scout and trainer for the New York Yankees when his elbow gave out and cut short his pitching career.

But young Evers, who would change his name to ?Rip Hawk,? caught the wrestling bug and began competing professionally in 1949. A five-year stint in the Marine Corps and the Korean War interrupted his ring career until he returned in 1954.

Hawk speaks fondly, almost reverently, about the ?old days? of the business. He broke in training with the ?freaks? of the rough-and-tumble business.

He credits much of his success to breaking in with that generation of pro wrestlers.

?Those guys would come in and beat the hell out of us,? recalls Hawk. ?They walked on our faces and arms. They were tough men who didn?t care about anything. They wouldn?t take a week or two off if they were injured. They?d just wrap it up and go. If you wanted to make a living back then, you had to work.?

?I was very fortunate to have wrestled in an era with old-timers who had been wrestling in the ?30s and ?40s,? he adds. ?They were outstanding wrestlers ? guys like Ed ?Strangler? Lewis and Jim Londos. Lewis was a classy guy. The old-timers would dress up, conduct themselves as athletes and gentlemen, and everyone respected them greatly back then.?

Hawk recalls meeting Lewis for the first time.

?I about fell over because I couldn?t believe I was meeting him ... the same with Bronko Nagurski. Those guys were my heroes. It was an unbelievable feeling. It was wrestling back then. It was about the moves, the holds, the wrestlers. We had a number of Olympians get into professional wrestling. It was a great era.

?I wrestled guys like John Pesek, who used to take his mat under his arm and go to towns and challenge people. I was a young kid and scared to death, but to wrestle him was an honor.?

There was never a time, says Hawk, when he didn?t love the business.

?I have a lot of good memories of wrestling. Even though we had bad times when wrestling was down, I still enjoyed wrestling. I loved it and I still love it.?

Drawing heat

Hawk went on to become one of the most respected ? and toughest ? workers in the business.

?I liked working with guys like Johnny Valentine because when he hit you, he would hit you. And if you hit him, he wouldn?t cry. None of that ?loosen up, loosen up.??

The tougher, the better, says Hawk.

?We once had a big riot at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis. Valentine was a babyface. I beat him and did something to him after the match, and people went nuts. They started coming in the ring, and he?s just laying there. The cops were trying to get them off, and the fans were being violent. I told Valentine, ?Get up you SOB,? and he just laid there laughing. I told him I was going to kick him right in the head if he didn?t get up. The fans were coming, and I didn?t want to fight my way to the back.?

Hawk escaped and fortunately lived to fight another day.

?He (Valentine) thought it was funny, but I got him back a couple of times,? says Hawk. ?But he and I got along well. A lot of guys didn?t like him because he liked to rib a lot. Some of his ribs were pretty bad, but he was great to work with.?

Riots were not an uncommon occurrence during Hawk?s career as a top-tier bad guy. One particular mob uprising in St. Joseph, Mo., came close to costing him his life.

Hawk was working with a young Larry ?Rocky? Hamilton (later known as The Missouri Mauler), a hometown product, when fans became enraged over the proceedings.

?I had just gotten out of the Marines,? recalls Hawk. ?We had such an hellacious match that they brought it back several times. Then he (Hamilton) made up a song about me called ?Squawk, Squawk, Chicken Hawk,? and he would sing it in the ring with his guitar. One night I acted like it really got to me, so I attacked him and beat him. He was laying there, and the people went nuts.?

Scores of fans stormed the ring and began laying their boots to a defenseless Hawk.

?There was so many people kicking at me, they couldn?t even hit me,? says Hawk. ?They were probably kicking one another. But they drug me outside the arena like an old side of beef and had a rope thrown over the lamppost out there.?

Only the timely effort of a police sergeant saved his life.

?This officer shot his gun off and told everyone to get back. I?ll always be grateful to that man. They were going to hang me.?

Surprisingly enough, they came back for several rematches, this time with beefed-up security.

?Those Missouri people could get pretty bad. That?s what you call heat.?

Few teams drew as much heat as Rip Hawk and Swede Hanson during their long run in the Mid-Atlantic area. Both were as much on the defense against crazed fans as they were opponents in the ring.

Hawk remembers enraged spectators storming the ring in Norfolk, Va., during a match with local favorite Johnny Weaver.

?Fans were piling on top of me, but I found a hole and crawled out. I don?t know who they were beating, but it wasn?t me. Weaver had this sigh of relief when he saw me, and I just went to the locker room.?

Once at the Township Auditorium in Columbia, fans rioted prior to Hawk and Hanson?s grudge match with Nelson Royal and Paul Jones. The bout never started and the show was stopped.

Hawk and Hanson had a number of court dates throughout the territory as a result of having to punch their way back to dressing rooms from Charleston to Richmond.

One irate fan even jumped from the bleachers in an attempt to get his hands on the wrestlers.

?Swede grabbed him and threw him to the floor. I said, ?Dammit, Swede, he?s moving,? and I kicked him in the head. So the riot was on.?

?We fought all the way back to the locker room,? says Hawk. ?One of the wrestlers heard the noise and locked the door, so we couldn?t get to safety. We had our backs to the door. I hit this guy and he wouldn?t go down. Swede hit him and he wouldn?t go down. Swede hit him again and he wouldn?t go down. All of a sudden he fell to the ground. It turns out that (wrestler) Suni War Cloud had been holding him up the entire time. He was laughing like hell when he dropped him.?

It all goes to show, says Hawk, that there?s humor in everything.

Hanging up the tights

Hawk and Hanson, known as ?The Blond Bombers,? were one of the most despised duos in the wrestling business. Outside the ring, though, they were gentlemen who never refused to sign an autograph.

?Swede and I never got a big head,? says Hawk. ?We were never above anybody. If little kids wanted an autograph, we were more than ready to oblige. We even helped people with financial problems.?

Hawk remembers helping a pair of young brothers many years ago ? now veteran referees Earl and Dave Hebner.

?Swede and I gave them money when they were young kids. Their mother was raising them, and they didn?t have a lot. One of them, in fact, called me a couple of years ago. They didn?t forget. They were good kids even when they were young.?

Hawk began winding down his wrestling career in the late ?70s. He was approaching 50, picking up occasional dates in cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio, but no longer working every day or even every week.

His last full-time run was in the Tulsa territory. He said he knew when it was time to literally take off the boots.

?I felt like I was wrestling in slow motion,? he says. ?It looked like I was in the ring with the same people who were there 30 years ago. I figured that was a warning.?

Hawk recalls telling partner Hanson that he was quitting.

?He said I wasn?t. I told him I was. We were going back home that night to our apartment. I stopped the car and threw my boot out on the Will Rogers Turnpike. And that was it. I caught a plane the next day and went home. I just blew out of there. I knew I didn?t want to wrestle anymore. I didn?t want to end up like the guy in that movie ?The Wrestler.??

The Blond Bombers

Not a day passes, he says, when he doesn?t think about Big Swede. They lived life large.

The stocky 5-9, 240-pound ex-Marine appeared to be a peculiar match for the 6-4, 280-pound Hanson, a two-time Golden Gloves champion from New Jersey whose massive mitts and size-17 boots made him one of the most powerful men in the business.

The duo became one of the most feared and hated teams in the business during the ?60s and ?70s. They were headliners throughout the world, but their favorite stomping ground was the Carolinas-Virginia territory, where they engaged in bloodbaths with such popular tandems as The Scott Brothers, George Becker and Johnny Weaver, The Kentuckians, and Nelson Royal and Paul Jones, as well as brawls with fellow ?bad-guy? teams such as The Assassins, Skull Murphy and Brute Bernard, Aldo Bogni and Bronco Lubich, and The Anderson Brothers.

Hawk?s patented coup de grace was the piledriver, while he taught the reverse neckbreaker to Hanson. ?And he did it quite well,? he adds.

The two competed in an era in which wrestlers sported scars as badges of honor.

?We used to get hurt,? says Hawk. ?We used to get our heads busted. It was an extremely tough business, but we loved it.?

Hawk still gets emotional when thinking about Hanson. The wrestler passed away in 2002 at the age of 68.

Their ring partnership lasted two decades. Their act was simple: Rip did the talking. Swede was the enforcer.

The two, he says, got along ?better than most men and their wives.?

?We were together everyday, traveling nights, days in cars, planes. We went around the world. We tried to make the best of everything.?

The platinum blonds, who held numerous regional and world tag-team titles, were headliners from Charlotte to Tokyo, from Singapore to the Australian Outback. More importantly, ?we were closer than any brothers could ever be,? says Hawk. Both would readily admit that they burned the candle at both ends, but neither would have done it one bit differently.

?It was the hard life we lived, but we had outstanding times,? says Hawk. ?We lived it all the way. We lived it like we were supposed to. Sixteen years of fun.?

The only problem was that the pair took the act outside the ring. They lived in the fast lane, and the grind took a toll.

?No two people should hit it as hard as we did. We figured about we drank about a gallon a day about four days a week.?

But there?s no regrets. He?d gladly do it all over again.

?Swede was great. But I did well by myself too. I?d do it again the same way ? all but all the drinking and the partying with the girls. Blew too much money. Swede and I one weekend in Tokyo blew a thousand apiece. And that was pretty good money back then.?

Hawk had a reputation as a partier, but says he tried to maintain a good standing in his home base of Charlotte.

?I was a very good man in Charlotte,? he laughs. ?I just went to private parties there. Swede loved it. He didn?t worry about Crockett ? he knew I had Crockett,? says Hawk, who also served as a booker for Jim Crockett Promotions during the early ?70s.

Houston and San Antonio were good ?party towns,? says Hawk. ?But Norfolk was my town. We had fun in Richmond, but we had wild times in Norfolk.?

?It was a fight a night ... Those were the days,? he reflects. ?I think about them every day. It?s a wonder I?m alive.?

Successful businessman

Life is good for Rip Hawk.

He and his wife of more than 35 years, Kitty, have a home in Hereford, but he spends a lot of time on his daughter and son-in-law?s 20,000-acre ranch 30 miles outside town.

?There?s a lot of dirt road ? 18 miles of pavement and 12 miles of bad road before you get to the ranch,? he jokes. ?Hereford is a town of 15,000, and it?s spread out.?

Hawk, who has two daughters and a son from a previous marriage, along with four grandchildren ranging in ages from 4 to 14, has been involved with a number of successful business ventures outside of wrestling.

He was an originator of the microwave popcorn on the cob. He did pretty good with it, he says, securing business deals with Holidays Inns at Disney World in Florida.

?I sent it all over the country,? says Hawk, who also has worked in the ice cream business.

He did that for nearly four years, but he realized it was fad.

He also went into the vending business, but says he grew tired of it. He had all the major hotels on I-40 in Amarillo, two golf courses, a Greyhound bus station and other locations.

?Too much work ? the work involving trying to keep somebody working,? he says. ?If somebody didn?t show up, I had to do it. I got tired of it. I got rid of it.?
Leading by example

Two decades ago the director of the local YMCA approached Hawk and asked him if he would be interested in coaching wrestling.

?Hell yeah,? Hawk said without thinking twice.

He did it until earlier this year when a new manager took over the facility.

?I might have been the oldest living active wrestling coach,? he says.

Hawk came into the job with considerable experience. He had started an amateur wrestling program at Charlotte Catholic High School in 1969 with David Crockett while he was wrestling in the Carolinas.

?David was a big help as a coach. He knew enough to teach kids. Terry Sawyer was a good amateur, and he also helped. We had a lot of free help.?

?They?d take these guys out of the gym and make them wrestlers,? says Hawk. ?I can show you a jillion guys from the old days who didn?t have much muscle, but they were hell in the ring. Guys were just natural characters back then. We didn?t have to go out and act. We were ourselves. If you had the charisma, it showed. Just look at wrestlers like Johnny Valentine and Pat O?Connor. They had it.?

His job at the Hereford Y, which he held until this year, was highly rewarding.

?I loved it. Seeing the kids progress made it worthwhile. I?ve had kids come out of this program with scholarships from Ohio, Oklahoma and Arizona State.?

Some are now doctors, some are youth ministers and some even went into the Marine Corps since they knew Hawk served in that branch.

Hawk notes a letter that was prominently posted in his office. It was sent to him by three former students in their late teens. The letter reads:

?You have guided and trained us to the best we can and taught us to be as one. To think for ourselves. When we were down, you made us get up and go. Looking forward to tomorrow ... a better day. To keep on going and never quit. Without you being there by our side and believing in us, we would never have been the champions we are today. Thank you for believing in us and always being there and for being our coach/friend, because without you, nothing would have been possible.?

?To know that you helped kids,? Hawks says, his voice trailing off.

One of Hawk?s former students went to Ohio University on a scholarship and ended up No. 6 in the country. He had been involved in gangs before Hawk got a hold of him.

You?re a good wrestler, but you?re not going to wrestle anymore unless you quit the gang,? he told his 270-pound heavyweight. ?If you aren?t out of the gang, you?re staying home.?

Hawk volunteered to go with him and tell the gang members that his student was quitting. When his mom found out about the gang, she wanted to join them. But they didn?t have to.

?The kid quit on his own,? says Hawk.

Hawk says he was like a father to these boys, and they would still come to visit him. It was always the most rewarding part of his job.

?They were going down the worst paths you could ever imagine,? says Hawk, noting that 75 to 80 percent of his wrestlers were Hispanic.

He takes great pride in knowing that he turned many lives around.

?I helped a lot of people here. It kept them out of trouble.?

He also ran a summer program called ?Summer Shake-Up.?

?They ran, jumped, lifted weights, did calisthenics. ?I did it for years.?

Close calls

It?s been an eventful year for Hawk.

He?s been in and out of the hospital in recent months.

?They don?t know what?s wrong with me. But I am 82 years old.?

Last year presented its own set of challenges.

?I?ve had five ribs broken. I?ve had pneumonia. I had surgery on my heart to put in my new battery.?

That being said, he adds, ?I feel pretty lucky.?

Hawk had his second defibrillator inserted in July 2011. The first one lasted nearly eight years.

?I got real weak and run down. It knocked me down. Doctors told me not to do anything. But I still went to work. But I didn?t travel.?

Hawk, who once suffered a broken sternum and broke a kneecap in 1972 when the late Bobby Shane placed his knee on the bottom rope and jumped on it, competed in an era in which wrestlers sported scars as badges of honor.

?I had my nose broken eight times, got a cauliflower ear, ribs broken, both elbows broken, kneecap broken, I don?t know how many times my ankles have been traumatized, and I had my sternum split. Other than that, it was pretty good.?

He also had neck surgery.

?I can?t even stand up straight anymore because of my neck. I have to hold my head down. I took a suplex in Colorado Springs and they did surgery on it and made it worse. It still bothers me.?

He also had a close last year while driving home from work one evening. He literally ran into some cows.

?I don?t drive fast out there because there are too many antelope and bear. It?s miles and miles of nothing. I was bouncing off of them. I tried to move, and they wouldn?t move. I hit my brakes.?

?At nighttime they kind of sneak up on you,? he explains. ?They come out of the tall grass. I went right through a herd of them.?

Hawk thinks the sheer volume of cows crossing the road that night might have saved him from injury.

?There were so many of them, and I think that?s what helped me from turning over.?

Hawk, who was about 15 miles from home when the accident occurred, totaled his old pickup truck.

?It tore out my grill, the horn went through my radiator, the headlight was gone, the belts were torn off and the hood was bent like the pyramids. Other than that everything was fine.?

One cow was killed, and several were injured but quickly scattered into the night.

?It did a number on my truck. But it didn?t bother me. I was headed west and ended up east,? he jokes. ?They turned me right around.?

Officers on the scene repeatedly asked Hawk if he was shaken up or scared.

To which he replied: ?Hell no, I?m not hurt, and I?m sure not scared. I?ve been shot at and missed. It doesn?t bother me.?

It was just another ?thrill ride? for Hawk.

?And,? he adds, ?you don?t even have to go to the carnival.?

?An inspiration?

There?s never a dull moment in the life of Rip Hawk.

?You have to be active to stay alive,? he philosophizes. ?The only time I sit around is when I?m home.?

His tag-team partner for the past 35-plus years has been wife Kitty.

?She takes good care of me,? he says.

Just like a good teammate in the squared circle.

?The other day I can honestly say I was thinking about that very thing. When you marry somebody, you never know. They might desert you. She hasn?t deserted yet. She?s a very good woman.?

Then again, he never did have a problem finding good tag-team partners.

?I?ve been lucky with that,? he chuckles. ?And my daughters are all good to me.?

?One thing is my dad has shown me and taught me is to never give up and to always be strong for your family,? says daughter Angela Van Wyk. ?I know with all the stuff I?m going through with my child being ill, if I were weak and wasn?t taught by my dad to be strong and to have the Lord in my life, I wouldn?t be where I am today with everything that I am going through.?

Hawk?s 4-year-old granddaughter recently had a sizable growth removed from her brain and has to go to a hospital in Dallas for monthly treatments. The growth initially was the size of an egg.

?She?s doing very well,? he says. ?They took out as much as they could, and with the treatments, it has continued to shrink. She?s a very brave little girl. You would never know she?s been ill. She?s as tough as a boot. She runs around this ranch, goes to the barn with the horses ... you?d never know it. I thank God for that.?

?He?s a big inspiration in my life and in my children?s lives as well,? says Van Wyk. ?He has taught me that family is second and God is always first. With that you can conquer anything.?
A good life

To Rip Hawk, the bottle is always half full, never half empty.

?I know I can sleep at night. It means a lot. I don?t have any stress. I don?t let anything bother me. When I got out of the Marine Corps, I knew I wasn?t going to let anything bother me. Ever. And that?s the way I live. Be straight with people, don?t be above anybody and you can make it.?

It?s a simple philosophy, but one that has worked well for him over the years.

?The Profile?s over with. Now it?s the No-file,? he jokes.

His wrestling days long over, Hawk?s content with his new life and looking back at the old days with fond memories.

?I loved the business. I just don?t want to see it destroyed. I?ve got to keep on plugging.?

Hawk, who underwent quintuple bypass surgery 25 years ago, is on his second defibrillator. Unfortunately, he says, his horseback-riding days are over.

?With this thing I?ve got, the doctor told me that I can?t take all that bouncing. I said, ?Ah, hell, what do you expect me to do???

?If you want to do it, die,? he told Hawk.

?I told him I?d stay off,? Hawk replied.

Hawk admittedly has slowed down a bit, but age hasn?t prevented him from enjoying life to the fullest.

?That doesn?t stop you. I can still walk good except when my knee decides to go out. I still like my drinks. One or two a day except maybe when a friend comes over. And we might kill the jug.?

Sometimes he?ll even sound a bit like one of his former young charges.

?Who do you think he learned from? And I was around a lot longer than Ric (Flair).?

That was decades ago, and Hawk is still enjoying life, albeit in an entirely different manner.

?I?m just a happy man. I enjoy life and I love life. That?s why I think I?m still here,? he says.

?I?m not going to change my ways. I just love life too much. I?m slow and easy. You?re not going to change me. I?ve always taken my time doing everything all my life. Except when I was in the ring. And even then I wasn?t fast. So why should I rush now??

Nowadays a satisfying night for Rip Hawk is sitting back and watching the stars in that big west Texas sky. That?s just what a cowboy does.

?I like to come out here on the weekends and just sit ... watch the stars and the cattle. It?s beautiful and you can really think. If you could see this right now ... the reddest moon is coming up over the prairie. I?m telling you it?s so pretty. You have no idea how relaxing it is. I guess this is where they?re going to plant me. I wish they?d find a plot on this ranch for me.?

Turn back the clock about 50 years, and on a weekend night chances were good that a local fan might have seen Rip ?The Profile? Hawk pulling up to the Old County Hall, getting ready to headline a show, and later extend the party scene into the wee hours of the morning.

?About a week ago I started to really miss wrestling again. I have such good memories. I was a headliner in St. Louis and all those big places. And here I am now. But I have more good memories than bad memories. I was very happy with my career and what I did.?

?I wish I could still do it,? he adds. ?But for now I can just think about it, and it makes me feel good.?

Rip Hawk has enjoyed a full life, a life few really get to experience, but admits he hasn?t done it alone.

?I?m not a religious fanatic, but I do believe if you have God on your side, you wouldn?t want a better partner in your corner. The good Lord has been very good to me in my lifetime.?

-- Paul McClemens, owner of Principles of Design Productions, LLC will be releasing an autobiography on Rip Hawk titled ?Rip?s Road Stories: Wrestling in Style? available soon at Amazon.com and pridesproductions.com.